graviton.demon.co.uk/ Honey%20bee

1. www.graviton.demon.co.uk/ Honey%20bee

2. Genus Apis * Apis andreniformis * Apis cerana (Indian honey bee) o Apis cerana cerana o Apis cerana indica * Apis dorsata (giant honey bee) * Apis florea (little honey bee) * Apis koschevnikovi * Apis laboriosa (Himalayan honey bee) * Apis mellifera (honey bee) o Apis mellifera adami o Apis mellifera anatoliaca o Apis mellifera carnica o Apis mellifera caucasica o Apis mellifera cecropia o Apis mellifera iberica o Apis mellifera ligustica (common honey bee) o Apis mellifera macedonica o Apis mellifera mellifera o Apis mellifera pomonella o Apis mellifera scutellata o Apis mellifera sicula * Apis nigrocincta * Apis nuluensis

3. Apis florea Apis dorsata Apis mellifera Apis cerana http://gears.tucson.ars.ag.gov/home/buchmann/photography.html

4. Area of introduction Area of indigeneity Distribution of Apis species worldwide

5. Honey bees were brought to North America in 1622. Seventeenth-century Native Americans referred to honey bees as “white man’s flies” because they appeared everywhere European settlers established themselves.

7. Steamship travel across the Atlantic made it possible to bring honey bees to the U.S. without massive losses. The Italian race was first imported in 1859. Subsequently imported were the Egyptian, Cyprian, Punic, Syrian, and Carniolan races.

8. Reports of Isle of Wight disease (= Acarapis woodi?) in Europe led to the Honey Bee Act of 1922 (“A Bill to Restrict Foreign Commerce in the Importation into the United States of the Adult Honey Bee”. In 1976, a clause was added, prohibiting the importation of eggs and semen.

9. In 1957, Warwick Kerr, Brazilian bee geneticist, in an effort to improve honey bee performance in a tropical environment, imported an African race, Apis mellifera scutellata, to cross-breed with the resident Italian bees, (A.m.ligustica) Apis mellifera scutellata

10. An African bee (right) is effectively morphologically indistinguishable from an Italian bee (left) by any easily visible criterion other than size.

11. Morphometrics (measurement of relative size of body parts) can be used to distinguish among races of bees

12. http://www.afpmb.org/pubs/tims/graphics/table2.jpg

13. Exposed nest of Apis mellifera

14. Honey badgers, honeyguides and bee eaters are among the predators of honey bees in Africa

15. Ways in which African bees are more desirable than European bees • They’re phenomenally productive (90 kg honey/colony vs 24 kg honey/colony) • They forage under a greater range of environmental conditions • They utilize ephemeral resources more efficiently

16. Ways in which African bees are less desirable than European bees • They’re more prone to absconding (abandoning the nest) • They’re more prone to nectar-robbing • They swarm more frequently (their colonies are smaller) • They’re extremely aggressive (each colony has 5 times more guards; workers are 8-10 times more likely to sting, and they’ll travel > 1 mile to sting intruders)

17. African bee venom is NOT more toxic than is the venom of any other honey bee. Nor does each individual African bee produce more venom per sting than do other bees.

18. Glove of beekeeper handling African bees

19. African bees increased their range in the Western hemisphere at a rate of about 200-300 miles per year. http://biology.usgs.gov/s+t/noframe/x189.htm

20. Media coverage of the northward progress of African bees was generally sensationalized.

21. “Killer bee” isn’t a particularly descriptive name for Apis mellifera scutellata. As far as is known, it does not seek to inflict anything other than pain on nest invaders. The name was most likely coined to discredit Warwick Kerr, a well-known critic of the military regime in power in Brazil.

22. “Killer bees” entered into the pop culture lexicon

24. Walter S. Sheppard, UIUC alumnus, who developed a DNA-based method for identifying African and hybrid Africanized bees

25. FABIS (Fast African Bee Identification System) • take sample of 50-100 bees • mount wings on microscope slides • measure wing length • if the average wing length < 9 mm, they’re probably African bees

26. African bee dateline • 1990--first detected in Hidalgo, TX (October) • 1991--first “attack” (Jesus Diaz stung 18 times while mowing his lawn in Brownsville, TX) • 1993--first U.S. fatality attributed to Apis mellifera scutellata (Lino Lopez, 82, stung 40 times while trying to destroy a colony in the wall of a building in Harlingen, TX, July 15, 1993) • 1993--first report of Am. scutellata in Arizona and New Mexico • 1995--Arizona’s first fatality (88-year-old Apache Junction woman stung repeatedly after disturbing a large colony in an abandoned building October 10, 1995) • 1994--first report of Am. scutellata in California • 2004--first report of African bees in Oklahoma when work crews cut through a storm-damaged tree in Tipton (August) www.desertusa.com

28. How beekeepers are minimizing African bee impacts on agriculure • requeening and genetic manipulation • management changes (more smoke and protective clothing, apiary placement, reduction in hive numbers)

29. Working with bees in Kenya.

30. Smoker for African bees (left) and Italian bees (right)

31. www.ceris.purdue.edu/napis/ pests/ahb/mgif/ahb1997.gif

32. Saturday March 12, 2005 The Desert Dispatch (CA) Bee attack injures three in Newberry By Ian Morrison/Staff Writer Newberry Springs--An attack by a swarm of suspected “Africanized” bees Friday sent two members of a Newberry Springs demolition crew to the hospital and marked the start of this year’s bee season, Newberry Springs Fire Department officials said. The attack occurred shortly before 12:30 pm when the four- member crew disturbed a three feet by five feet hive while demolishing an abandoned residence with a tractor in the 3400 block of Newberry Road... The four men, whose names were not released, received an estimated 100 hundred stings apiece before they were able to run away from the angry swarm... A swarm of bees also attacked a family in Rancho Cucamonga Thursday, though the victims mostly escaped harm by barricading themselves in their upstairs bathroom.” http://www.desertdispatch.com/2005/111064446038392.html

33. What to do if you’re faced with a swarm of killer bees: --run away in a straight line as fast as possible (zig-zagging slows you down) --cover your head and eyes even if you have to leave other parts of your body exposed --find shelter in a building (but don’t lock the doors) --don’t jump in water (“this only works in cartoons”) --seek medical help if you’re stung more than a dozen times or if you display any of the symptoms of anaphylactic shock

34. Symptoms of anaphylactic shock • profuse perspiration, dizziness, light-headedness, rapid heartbeat, low blood pressure • wheezing, breathing difficulty, tightness in chest, coughing • hives, itchy skin, skin swelling • swelling of lips and tongue • nausea, vomiting, cramps • throat swelling, obstruction of air flow • cyanosis • confusion, loss of consciousness

35. Number of U.S. deaths attributed to African bees = 7 Number of U.S. deaths annually attributed to stinging hymenopterans = ca. 40

36. “Twenty of the greatest blunders in Science in the last twenty years Discover, Oct, 2000 by Judith Newman ALL ABUZZ Sometimes mistakes that were made decades ago take a while to make the force of their foolishness felt. Consider the case of killer bees. In the 1950s, Brazilian geneticists crossbred mild-mannered European honeybees with their more aggressive, territorial cousins from Africa, reasoning that the Africanized bees would be better suited than their European counterparts to warmer South American climes. They were too right. Before the aggression could be bred out of the resulting cross, the buggers got away, and some immediately headed north. In 1990 the first Africanized honeybees were discovered in Texas. Since that time they've gradually spread to New Mexico, Arizona, California, and in 1999, to Nevada.” http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_10_21/ai_65368923

37. Infestation by varroa mites (top) and tracheal mites (bottom) have devasted feral colonies of honey bees and slowed the progress of Africanization.

38. Small hive beetle, Aethina tumida

39. University of Bath Killer Bees American Football Team. http://students.bath.ac.uk/su5bees/beemain.jpg

40. Nature 415, 163 - 165 (10 January 2002); doi:10.1038/415163a Parasitic Cape honeybee workers, Apis mellifera capensis, evade policing STEPHEN J. MARTIN*, MADELEINE BEEKMAN*†, THERESA C. WOSSLER‡ & FRANCIS L. W. RATNIEKS Transport of Cape honey bees from southern to northern South Africa by beekeepers brought them into contact with A. m. scutellata; workers of the thelytokous Cape honey bee invade the A.m. scutellata colonies and reproduce by thelytoky, overwhelming the hive with workers who don’t work. The diploid Cape honey bee eggs go undetected by the A. m. scutellata workers. • The yellow bee is Apis mellifera scutellata, • the species to whom the hive belongs. • The black bee is Apis mellifera capensis. http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s458185.htm